Corporate social responsibility or corporate citizenship or corporate conscience relates to a mode of regulation within the corporate world where corporations display a form of corporate conscience. A corporation chooses integrate its corporate consciences into its business model, partly to meet industry standards and also to win over customers. Corporate social responsibility is not statutory but has elements of ethics and norms within industries and thus a company benefits more from engaging in corporate citizenship, than by keeping away and choosing not to incur costs related to such endeavors. Activities conducted in the name of corporate responsibility involve employees, consumers, the environment, local communities, stakeholders and the general public. It is therefore safe to say that the greater motive of corporate citizenship is the public interest which is generated the through growth and development of the community. The inclusion of corporate social responsibility in a business and in decision making is summarized as people, profit, and planet, whereby all three need to be considered in decision making and general operations. A common example of corporate social responsibility currently, is the almost worldwide concern demonstrated by companies about the environment. This has resulted in numerous ?green' projects and initiatives from different companies, all of which aim to safeguard the environment, which at one point or another is usually compromised by them. A company may choose to initiate a project that promotes the development of the community which it supports over time, or it may choose to engage in philanthropy where the company makes donations towards existing initiatives that are chosen by the management. The alternative approach to corporate consciousness is the incorporation of fair trade practices into the running and management of an organization (Hopkins, 17).

[...] The evaluation for Nike will not be sufficient if only the corporate social responsibility reports are used, instead of including an objective evaluation of the situation on the ground. The efforts so far are commendable, but whether they are enough for a company of Nike's influence and size will only be evident after the results from the current efforts are evaluated. The Industry The global corporate environment has fully embraced corporate social responsibility. This has grown and spread over the last two decades through initiatives that began in the 1990's. [...]

[...] These have increased its rating in terms of corporate social responsibility (Hollender, Breen and Senge, 120). The company has also taken great strides forward to ensure favorable working conditions in factories contracted to manufacture its products in terms of the physical conditions, as well as the remuneration and stipend for the workers. There were reports of use of child labor in some of its factories but these have now been looked into and the company boasts a completely child-free labor force in all its factories. [...]

[...] According to the corporate social responsibility report, the incidence of cases of factories reported with non-compliance has decreased from a total of 50 factories in 2007 to 27 in 2009. Factories with critical non-compliance issues have reduced from 19 to 6 in the same period, while those with serious issues have reduced by 50% from 21 to 11 (Nike CSR report). Nike has also enforced its own code of conduct to all its contracted factories to ensure uniformity of standards for all employees working in these factories. [...]